The Question of Climate.

I just went for a walk to the top of the lane and back. I needed a winter coat to be comfortable. The wind was howling and the rain spitting. In June I should be sitting out in the garden of an evening, listening to the blackbirds sing and watching the martins perform their aerial acrobatics.

March was the warmest for over fifty years. April was the wettest for over a hundred years. The first two thirds of May were unusually cold, while the last ten days resembled a good July. There are hosepipe bans in force because of low water levels caused by two unusually dry winters in a row, but now they’re lifting them again because we’ve had an unusually wet spring.

Britain has always had a capricious climate, but it’s becoming unusually capricious even by British standards. Is this the shape of things to come, I wonder, or only the start of the shifting shape?